


Things to Tell (Starting Small)

by Vee (Mlle_Vee)



Series: Things to Tell [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mlle_Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday, Padmé Naberrie Skywalker, Amidala of the Naboo (and, though she had no liking for the name, the Lady Vader), would tell her daughter a great many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things to Tell (Starting Small)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Father's Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/34058) by FernWithy. 
  * Inspired by [First Encounters](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/34060) by FernWithy. 



> First published August 3, 2001.

Someday, Padmé Naberrie Skywalker, Amidala of the Naboo (and, though she had no liking for the name, the Lady Vader), would tell her daughter a great many things. Figuring what to tell first would be the hardest part—should it be Tatooine? The shop where a little boy perched on the counter and managed to make her smile in a time when she was certain her mouth would never draw up so again?—no, no, that was not it. That was it its own story, separate from this. If she focused enough on the present, that Ani could have been any child. The beginning should always be Naboo, she decided. It was the launch site, always, for a thousand different journeys. She was uncertain which journey was the important thing for Leia to know about. A happier journey, perhaps, with a Padmé at Leia's own age, running barefoot through the grasses behind her grandmother's home. That was a girl ready to become a leader, as Leia wished to do. Or a troublesome journey, with a young and naive queen determined to liberate her people.

Or a lifelong journey. Padmé had not begun to think of how to tell Leia about her father yet.

Winama had always told her to start small when she was at the loom. A small mistake could alter the pattern of the entire fabric. Padmé winced at that—how true—but took the advice anyway. The small space in time around her. That would be good.

* * *

The most recent journey. This, too, started small: her own dismal, private parade from cell to mess hall was going as it had every day for eleven years, a stormtrooper flanking each side, no binders, the dark sad water on the other side of the shields, deep in the core of Naboo. A prisoner or two moving lips in whispers below her ability to hear. She knew the rumors. Some of the prisoners thought she had been a Jedi, too. This was just their crude rationalization of why she, too, was not handled roughly, grabbed beneath her arms, dragged along. The true reason she had complied with grace was not any physical power she held, but a psychological one: they feared her husband.

This was all the more reason that she knew something was about to change, when the tips of one of the stormtrooper's gloves brushed her shoulder in guidance out of the cell. No fear. This was kindness, something altogether different from the civility she saw in excess. It was something she had thought was gone forever.

This was something she would tell Leia about.

When they were out of sight of the other prisoners, the kind stormtrooper shoved her back and shot the other one. The feeling was beyond surprise, a heavy drumming of her heart. Hope. He didn't move at all.

"Who are you?" she said, a thin demand, not much of a question.

"Shouldn't be long now," he said. She couldn't tell if it was to her or to himself.

Someday, she would tell Leia of the joy that filled her, a swell from head to toe, when Captain Reotti—the man in charge of the camp—rounded the corner with a small access card tucked in his palm. He handed it to the stormtrooper, who fumbled with his settings on his blaster through the gloves. He smiled at Padmé.

"May the Force be with you, m'lady."

The stormtrooper fired a stun blast in the middle of Captain Reotti's torso, sending him to the floor.

"Come on." He held her elbow gently, and led her through the corridor.

Her spirit strengthened with each step. Was the Force with her, finally? Where were they going?

"You never answered my question."

The stormtrooper kept his silence for a moment more, until they reached a break in the corridor where he could shut a door behind them. "It is best I not say."

"It is best I not scream for the guards," she countered.

"The guards are under my command."

"If that is so, then you are under my husband's command."

A threat, wide and open.

He leaned toward her a bit. "I told a friend of ours that your rescue will set us back quite a bit, m'lady," he said matter-of-factly, "so you will be doing me quite the favor if you choose to stay."

He walked ahead. He would have to leave, anyway. She followed him.

"Our friend," she said.

"Who loves her daughter very much, I am told to tell you."

This was something to tell Leia as well. The rest she could not tell, as she could hardly believe it. It was too easy. The bongo ride up, the evolution of blue from dark to light, the Gungan sentry at the surface. How long had they been planning this? How long had they known?

* * *

Padmé slept well on the transport. What was there to fear now? Was there anything worse that could happen to her out here?

When she woke, the Gungan sat quietly at a table in the hold.

"Hesa not knowing, Yousa Majesty."

"Who?" she asked.

"Yousa husband. Wesa all be thinking yousa dead."

There was nothing to say to this. She looked at her hands. They were, indeed, alive.

"General Madine, hesa be tellin' him, if you want."

Did she want that?

"I don't know," she said, the words soft but true.

"Yousa don't need to be decidin' now."

* * *

Padmé felt as if she were trembling, but Bail assured her she was not.

"I don't know what to say," she said. He squeezed her shoulder for support. She did not need to be a Jedi to know that everyone was still quite certain that Amidala of the Naboo was dead, no matter how alive her body seemed.

They stood together in the Great Hall in the palace at Aldera, Leia's favorite spot. She had finally been called for, as Alderaan's sun began to rise in the distance, its light being distorted into a palette of red hues behind them. Padmé had been smuggled into the palace in the hours before, and she and Bail and Saché had sat up drinking tea and exchanging light stories. They talked about Leia in the abstract, no missed warm moments, just a profile. It was a briefing like any other. A young Imperial officer had been heard at the wrong time during one of the many speculative conversations about Ani. The officer had mentioned her imprisonment as a Rebel informant served his table drinks. This got to an Imperial general-turned-undercover Rebel named Crix Madine—her stormtrooper, she realized—who had come to Saché about this mystery woman. Her.

"It was Sabé," she had said. Her handmaiden may have sobbed then, but the Alderaanian vicereine was just sombre. Padmé knew. She would have been the only one to do it. The others, Maker bless them, would think hiding was enough. Sabé understood that Ani would find her over and over again. "This will ruin Palpatine, if you allow it."

Padmé wanted more than his ruin.

The soft steps echoed in the distance. Padmé's heart fluttered. She thought it might have stopped. Her girl, a woman-child, whose eyes grew wide at the sight of her, stood just paces away.

"Mother," Leia managed, her lips shaping the word as shakily as they had all those years ago.

All the things flew out the window, leaving Padmé with nothing to say. She moved forward, kissed each tear-streaked cheek, touched her forehead to her daughter's, and stood there, wordless and complete in the smallest moment. She could do this forever.


End file.
